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Comment by geerlingguy | Hacker News Reader

As one of the people who penned an article slamming Apple, I also wouldn't trade my 2016 Fn-key MBP for anything. But what concerns me more is where this Mac ship is headed, and if the Touch Bar is any indication, I hope Apple course-corrects soon.

The non-Touch Bar laptop with four TB3 ports and Touch ID would've been the _absolute_ best Mac for pretty much everyone who was waiting for a new one (battery life sacrifices for weight/size savings aside).

That 15" users _have_ to get a Touch Bar is a slap in the face to those users, imo.

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I've got a touch bar. I don't really use it, but I don't feel like I've been slapped in the face.

People who hunt-and-peck and haven't memorized keyboard shortcuts (basically everyone) are going to love the touch bar.

> memorized keyboard shortcuts

What keyboard shortcuts? I touch type, but nearly all the keyboard shortcuts I know use the lower part of the keyboard (ctrl- or cmd- or alt- some letter or number). I know F5 to refresh, but never used it on my Mac since the media keys were set to be the default and were more useful to me anyway.

The only thing that occasionally causes me to do a double-take about the touch bar is the non-physical escape key. And even that has not honestly been much of an issue for me.

> I know F5 to refresh, but never used it on my Mac since the media keys were set to be the default and were more useful to me anyway.

Probably a good thing, since F5 to refresh is a Windows thing and does nothing on the Mac.

Ctrl-F2 for the menu bar, use it all the time. Ctrl-F3 for the dock, use it all the time. F6 to continue, F7 to step into within Xcode.

I'd miss them I think.

Then it's a good thing that all the function keys pop right back up when you hit the FN key on the keyboard...

Thank you for this info. I have been fearful of this new change but need to try it out.

Not enough money (or an actual need) to upgrade at the moment, thankfully.

Function-keys aren't really useful for touch typing and are hard or impossible to memorize (in my experience) so I imagine the population of potential beneficiaries for the touchbar is larger than merely hunt-and-peck typists (I'm a twoish-fingered touch typist who gets 60wpm; I've tried to learn to touch-type but it slows me down for too long I always revert).

That said, I think that putting a display under the trackpad as well or instead would have a bigger payoff.

You lost 8 fingers in a terrible accident? :-)

I have trouble with the pinky finger on my right hand. I should be using it to hit the "p" but... I dunno, it just doesn't happen that way. Sorry, Mavis Beacon, I tried.

I've got a handful of function keys memorized, but I frequently miss if I'm not looking down. I'd never try to Alt-F5 on Windows without looking.

I think the function keys are much easier to touch-find on a full size keyboard because they are often in banks of 4 with a gap between them.

>People who hunt-and-peck and haven't memorized keyboard shortcuts (basically everyone) are going to love the touch bar.

How many Macbook Pro users fit that profile?

>How many Macbook Pro users fit that profile?

The vast majority.

Really? What are their use cases?

Mac users, sure. But almost all macbook pro users I know tend to be saavy.

Some corporations have a policy of buying MacBooks Pro for their employees, regardless of job requirements. I have met many who aren't aware of ... well ... they're not power users.

I consider myself pretty adept at typing but I am not able to reliably hit the fn keys without looking down save for maybe f1 and f5. Though, I am on a full size keyboard so the distance to travel to the top row is further.

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